Life 2: The Unhappy Ending
by shadowfire125
Summary: Superman is dead, and Lois can't find Clark.


_This takes place before the romance between Lois and Clark began picking up, so... season 1 and 2, I guess. I was in a dark mood when I wrote this, so I took it out on fictional people rather than people I have to live with every day. Wasn't actually going to originally be specifically for Lois & Clark, so I guess it can fit in just about any canon. Titled after a Stars song, because I'm lazy and uncreative like that and couldn't think of anything better. None of this is mine. Angst, go!_

* * *

><p>It was strange, surreal. Lois had difficulty believing it. Superman was dead.<p>

She'd always thought that it would take something momentous to kill him, something Earth-shattering and mountain moving. Invaders from parallel dimensions, aliens intent on enslaving humanity, the destruction of the planet. It was mind boggling that all it took was something small. A couple of crooks intent on robbing a bank had somehow gotten their hands on some kryptonite, and Superman hadn't realized it until he got too close. Then they shot him point blank in the chest, five times. Didn't pause to have the last laugh, didn't even hesitate at the idea of murdering someone who had done so much good. They just turned and gunned him down before anyone realized what was happening. The police were able to apprehend them, but it was a close call.

Clark had left with one of his odd excuses a few minutes earlier. Lois tried calling him, to no avail. She gave up, assuming he would find out what had happened on his own. That he would walk in with some half-assed apology for his absence, and she would forgive him, and he would let her cry on his shoulder. They would go to one of their apartments and eat junk food and swap Superman stories, and they would attend the memorial, and Perry would give them a day or two off, and then they would come back in to work and begin reporting on a world that no longer had a Superman.

But Clark never came back. He didn't step out of the elevator or trip over a trash can on his way over to her desk, he didn't offer her a lopsided grin or say he was sorry he took so long but this and that came up, he didn't sit down at his desk or get back to work on whatever article they were writing.

Lois looked up every time the elevator doors dinged, but he never stumbled his way back into the newsroom.

After she wrote her piece on Superman's death – the hardest thing she'd ever done, and she could feel the tears streaming down her face as she wrote it but couldn't bring herself to hide them or wipe them away – she went by Clark's apartment to see if she could track him down. Just having to do this made her stomach clench. It wasn't right, it wasn't like Clark. He was always there when she needed him, and now when she needed him most, he wasn't. Surely he knew that she needed him. Surely he knew…

She knocked on his door, but there was no response, so she jimmied the lock and slipped inside. Immediately, something felt wrong. The apartment was too quiet, too empty. Everything was there, the small amount of obligatory bachelor disarray over the general orderliness that seemed to follow Clark wherever he went. All his belongings were still there, she learned as she looked around. He hadn't packed and left anywhere. And yet, the apartment was lacking. It was lacking in Clark, and so Lois left. She went home. He wasn't there, either. She'd half-expected him to be waiting on the steps of her apartment building, so they could both go up and talk. Not even talk, just be with each other. Just to have company. To know they weren't alone in a world that was suddenly a much darker place.

She walked up her stairs in the company of her shadow that trailed on the wall alongside her, unlocked her door, and stood in the middle of her apartment. The window was open, the sheer curtains billowing in a faint breeze. Lois found herself hoping that Superman would float through the window, his cape mixing with the curtains, and that he would smile that wide trademark charismatic smile and hold her and tell her everything was okay, he wasn't really dead, and Clark would be at the Planet in the morning, and Lois wouldn't end up spending the evening curled under her blankets sobbing her heart out.

Lois stood there for a long time, not even moving to drop her purse. When she finally found it in herself to uproot her feet, she tossed her purse onto the couch as she drifted towards her bedroom, shrugging off her jacket and kicking off her shoes and leaving them where they lay like a trail of being too emotionally tired to care about the small material things. She collapsed onto her bed and crawled under the covers, pulling herself into the smallest ball she possibly could and, for the second time that day and the first day in years, began to cry. Because Superman was dead, because Clark wasn't there, because the world was a little less of a good place, she cried. Sobs wrenched from her throat and shook her shoulders and scooped out her insides.

Eventually, she fell asleep.

She woke up late, feeling groggy and entirely unrefreshed by her long night of being torn between restless sleep and fretful wakefulness. Against her better judgment, she made herself presentable and showed up at the Daily Planet. Perry saw her on her way in and told her she didn't have to be here. Instead of responding, she said, "Have you seen Clark?"

"I would have thought he was with you," Perry replied. "And I would have thought you were both taking the day off."

Lois had thought it wasn't possible for her stomach to twist more than it already was, but the knot in her gut tightened, and for a second Lois thought she was going to be sick. "He's gone missing," she said, fighting the urge to puke on Perry's shoes.

"I'm sure he's just holed up somewhere," Perry said, but Lois could tell he didn't believe it any more than she did.

Something was wrong. Something had to be wrong. Well, more wrong than Superman's death. Sure, Clark went missing all the time under some lame premise, but he always came back. And if he didn't come back by the next day, he would always let her know that he was going to be gone longer.

It was suddenly the most important thing in the world that she find Clark. Even if he was in some bar getting smashed, she had to find him. She had to know that he was at least somewhere. Eventually, she could forgive him for not being there for her. She just had to know that he wasn't nowhere.

Lois called the police. The police told her that she had to wait forty-eight hours before she could file a missing persons report. She slammed the phone down and suddenly became aware of Perry watching her.

"What?" she snapped.

"Why don't you go by his apartment?" Perry suggested lightly.

"Maybe I will," Lois retorted, not really sure why she had to _retort_. It hadn't been a question that needed a retort. He was just trying to help. But she was scared.

No, she was terrified. Blindingly terrified. Her heart pounded in her ears and her intestines were trying to strangle each other, and the hand she had lifted to knock on Clark's door shook terribly. She swallowed the bile rising in the back of her throat and knocked. There was a tense second, and then the door swung open. Clark stood there, looking surprised. "Lois?" he asked, concern etching his features. "What's wrong?"

She tumbled forward into his arms and sobbed, and he held her and stroked her hair and whispered comforting nothings in her ear.

"Excuse me, miss?"

Lois blinked, startled.

She stood in front of Clark's door, hand still lifted like an idiot, shivering like a leaf. A little old lady watched her curiously.

"Are you all right, dearie?" the old lady asked, peering at Lois with wide bespectacled eyes.

Lois gave her a weak smile. "Yes," she said. _No!_ her mind screamed. "Do you know the man who lives here?"

The old lady blinked owlishly. "Oh, yes," she said after a moment. "He helps me with my groceries sometimes. Such a nice boy."

"Have you seen him recently?" Lois asked, heart in her throat.

"Oh, I don't quite remember," the old lady replied, beginning to shuffle past Lois, down the hallway. "My perception of time isn't as good as it used to be. Perhaps two, three nights ago."

Lois bit her lip. "Thanks anyway," she said.

"No problem, dearie," the old lady said, then turned a corner and was gone.

Lois faced the door again and this time, she knocked. Like the night before, she waited but there was no answer. She picked the lock again, as she'd locked it behind her when she'd left. The apartment was exactly the same as she'd left it. The sheets on his bed were in the exact same state. Clark had not slept here last night.

Looking back on that moment, Lois would realize that it was then that she had known she would never see Clark again. She couldn't explain it. As a reporter, her instinct was her most valued sense, and it told her that Clark was gone. Her instinct never led her wrong. As much as her head would deny it, as much as she would search and investigate and speak with the police and the Kents, in her gut she knew that her best friend had vanished into some impossible, unbridgeable void.

The next day, there was a memorial for Superman. Lois attended it with Perry and Jimmy. Afterwards, Lois called the police. Clark had been missing for exactly forty-eight hours. An investigation was launched. Lois found that writing an article on Clark's disappearance was just as hard as writing about the death of Metropolis' (and the world's) superhero. Maybe it was harder. Lois didn't cry when she wrote it. She felt too empty. She wasn't sure she'd ever be able to cry again.

The day after that, Jonathan and Martha Kent came to Metropolis. Lois ran into them at Clark's apartment. She'd gone by to do some extra investigating, and Martha answered the door when Lois knocked. The look on the Kents' faces was the look of parents who knew their child was dead. Martha had been crying. Jonathan looked like he'd been stabbed in the heart. They were packing Clark's things. Lois never went back to Clark's apartment again.

There were no clues. No reason. One moment Clark was there, and the next he was not. Like some sick, twisted magic trick – now you see your best friend, now you don't. If he had been kidnapped, there was no ransom. If he had been murdered, there was no evidence and no body. If he'd run off, there was no motivation. He'd vanished from Lois' life as suddenly and inexplicably as he'd appeared in it.

Lois continued work at the Daily Planet. The crime rates that had gone down while Superman was around skyrocketed, and she was busier than ever. She threw herself into work with a gusto that worried those who knew her well. The social life she hadn't had much of before became nonexistent.

One day while she was doing laundry, she found one of Clark's T-shirts from when he'd crashed at her place once. Once upon a time.

She sat down on her bed and held the shirt, staring at it. She could picture him wearing it. Lifting it to her face, she felt the fabric, and she could smell him on it. She curled up with the shirt clutched to her and breathed deeply. Each breath brushed the dust and cobwebs out of her mind. For the first time in weeks, she could think clearly. She could see the picture of her life, and see how much unoccupied space was within that frame.

The two men in her life were gone. Maybe one day it wouldn't hurt as badly as it did now, but at the moment there were two holes, and one of them was more painful and was bleeding more freely than the other. She took another deep breath with her nose buried in the fabric. Superman's death left an indefinable absence in her – she couldn't quite trace the shape of it. He was a hero, he had saved her life countless times, and she was drawn to him like a moth to a flame. She was left behind feeling empty.

But when she turned her thoughts to Clark's disappearance… She inhaled again. There was a hole in her life, and she could see it. It sat behind Clark's desk at work, it handed her coffee in the morning and bought hot dogs from street vendors, it stayed late to work with her on an article and always knew what to say to her, whether it was to bring her down a peg or give her support. There was a hole in her life, a hole in her heart, and it was shaped like Clark Kent. In time, the emptiness left behind by Superman would fade at least partially, but the Clark-shaped hole would never fill. It would always hurt when she poked at the edges. It would follow her, matching her stride with her shadow. It would define her in the places she couldn't define herself.

A couple of years later, Perry tried to give Lois a partner. After less than a day, the new reporter requested a transfer to International. Perry didn't try to assign her another partner again.


End file.
